March 24, 2003
CYBERCOLUMN:
God's message board
___By John Duncan
______"I'm sitting here under the old oak tree, pondering friends. I remember friends from high school and college. Granbury, Texas, where I am privileged to pastor, has provided many a friend. Cambridge, England, serves as a place where new friends bless my life. But the friend I am thinking of is an old friend no longer on earth—Frank Wayne Piper.
___The Romans in antiquity possessed a quality of friendship called "amicitia
." Unusually, it included more than our common idea of friendship—talking; attending basketball games together; helping each other with projects around the house, like painting a room or repairing the broken lawn mower; sharing words in confidence and as a confidant; taking trips together. The Romans believed friendship created an invisible rope, an unspoken tie or bond of obligation to loyalty, to duty and to common fellowship. Friendship, for the Romans, was not a relationship to advertise but a lifelong series of obligations that deepened mutual respect.
___The Roman poet Horace hinted at this loyalty in these poetic words: "Accept as such this life below, and, should these bitter winds that blow mark the last sun that shines, be patient, friend."
___ Friendship forever surprises when Christ links friends by faith.
___Frank Piper and I became friends by blind luck, or since I do not believe in luck, divine providence. Frank was God's message board, an angelic messenger with poetic messages from heaven's postal service near God's throne. That Frank and I even became friends at all shocks me still.
___ Frank appeared one day at a church. He just showed up in the church parking lot, like a mysterious angel from the television show "Touched by an Angel," spilling some story about a truck wreck that nearly killed him; a story about his sick mother whom he arrived to take care of; a story about a truck-driving vagabond life; and an assignment to water flowers in the church flower bed. "God," as Frank once informed me, "sent me here for a reason." Frank thought maybe one reason was to water the flowers at church. Frank watered the flowers at church, smoked cigarettes outside, invited Christ into his life, was baptized and left messages.
___ When he lived, he wrote poetic messages to friends, nurses, doctors and church members: "Your smile is worth all that is written as God's love working in you." "If we want to deal with God the right, way we have to learn to love the right way." "Friends are what make humanity eternal." "Love is God made visible."
___That was Frank—God's message board, always dropping messages like seeds while wishing for them to bloom like flowers in the soil of sandy hearts.
___I do not want to romanticize this too much, because I must tell you that Frank annoyed me from the beginning. He was sandpaper on the chalk board, a finger nail on the chalk board of life.
___Frank's moods from the day I first met him swung from happy to sad, from despair to hopefulness, from anger to laughter, from messages of sincerity to messages which produced venom. Frank called all the time, morning, noon and night. Time, for all its preciousness, had no limit in Frank's imagination. Did Frank ever sleep?
___My daughter once informed me that caller ID identified Frank as an 86- time caller in one week. Has anyone ever called you 86 times in one week? Never mind if the whole world sleeps late on Saturday, Frank called at a little bit after 7 a.m. with words of greeting, "My friend, John, I've got to read something to you. …" The message board had an urgent message.
___ I learned to politely dismiss Frank and to calm his venomous messages. He once declared, "John Duncan, this is the last time you'll hear from me. You'll never see me at church again. You people don't have time for me. You don't have time for me. You're too busy for me." I feared that Frank was right. I take such messages seriously and thought maybe the reason Frank showed up was so that God could deliver me a message: Be patient, friend. Silently, quietly, like thread slipping into the eye of a needle, Frank wove his colorful threads around my heart. Frank, he got under my skin. Frank Wayne, he got into my heart.
___Time and messages revealed that bitter winds had blown in Frank's life—alcohol addiction; alienated from family; a wind-swept pain that poked like a needle in your belly (hurt people hurt people and cannot often help it); a tragic truck wreck; the loss of job; debt piled higher than a stack of boxes; brain surgery; and the dreaded poison—cancer. Frank and my wife, Judy, shared the sadness of treacherous cancer cells traveling lifeline blood supplies. Maybe, just maybe, this was another silent thread bonding us together in the shadows of life while we grasped and groped for ropes of Light.
___ Frank drove an old blue beat-up Cadillac that he once announced to me might have be repossessed. Frank was blue and beat-up himself—by life, by pain, by bitter winds that blow like hail storms in a pitch black night. St. John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul. The pastor/poet referenced it as an affliction of tears: "If all men's tears were let into one common sewer, sea, or brine, what were they all compared to Thine?" Augustine asked a question in his struggle while speaking of a storm that broke within followed by a deluge of tears: "I longed for a life of happiness, but I was frightened to approach it in its own domain; and yet, while I fled from it, I still searched for it."
___Frank, old buddy, darkness penetrated his heart while tears ran together in a speeding, streaming flash flood of anxiety and pain. He ran from happiness, yet searched for it, grasping desperately for a rope in the dark. And the rope was Christ.
___And so Frank searched for relief, for happiness, for peace. He crafted words into poetry. He even told the funeral home director before he died, "I am a truck driver and a writer of poetry." And so Frank penned messages: "Suffering is our crucible of faith so that we may comfort others in their time of need." Had Frank borrowed from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may comfort them which are in any trouble wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. And gently God spoke to me, 'Be patient, friend,'" and in Frank's words, "Never miss a chance to read a story to a child." And another thread tied a knot around my heart.
___Frank's cancer raced through his body. Frank phoned me the day doctors told him the news of his impending death. "John, come NOW. I need to see you."
___ "Frank," I replied, "I cannot come now. I have a funeral. I'll come after the funeral some time after lunch."
___ "I won't be here. I'm going to die. I guess I'll never see you again," he whispered as breathed heavily into the phone. The message board reverberated in my ear, an old message resurrected, "John Duncan, this is the last time you'll ever hear from me. You'll never see me at church again. You people don't have time for me. You don't have time for me. You're too busy for me." A voice kept repeating an old message Frank once mumbled to me, holding back a wall of tears, "John, I am lonely. I hate being alone."
___ Loneliness broods a melancholy madness in the mind, a darkness that screams. I finished the funeral. I raced to the hospital. Frank told me the news. Doctors explained that he had two months to live. In the hospital room, peace washed over Frank. A tear trickled down his right cheek like a drip from a leaky faucet. The rope tightened in a bond of friendship, a deepening sense of mutual respect. Frank at times angered me, frustrated me, puzzled me and made me laugh. Now tears and an invisible bond forever linked us. The bond was Christ.
___Frank died almost two months to the day after he got the news. He became a child again—helpless, dependent, a child wanting a story read. One day, he told me to sit down. He began, "My friend, John, I've got something to read to you." Had I heard this before? "Never miss a chance to read a story to a child." Frank read me jokes, one with the punch line about a child and some preacher preaching at church, "Mommy, if we give him money will he let us go?" and another with a punch line of some elderly lady saying in church to some guy who pledged to give to the building campaign, "Hit him again, God, hit him again." Frank laughed. I laughed.
___He gave me a message in an envelope before he died, words from Saint Francis of Assissi: "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace … where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury faith; where there is doubt faith … for it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." God hit me again with a message from Frank, that was the message from the message board: Make me an instrument of thy peace.
___On the day Frank died, I did not pass up the chance to read this man-child a story. We read Isaiah 40, with the Lord we will fly like eagles; Psalm 37:4, "Delight in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart." At long last, the desire for a delightful happiness ended; Frank's search found solace in a Savior; a peace that purifies the past. Quietly, silently, like thread slipping into the eye of a needle, Frank died, an invisible rope of Light reached down and pulled him into heaven. Frank slipped from the surly bonds of earth to clutch the hand of God, no longer afraid, no longer alone.
___ Sometimes in life, God sends us a Frank, a mysterious unknown messenger to remind us that he was lonely once, rejected many times, and still possessed the power to love; the bond to forgive; the joy of hope in the shadow of darkness while on the cross. The message plants and seed that blossoms into a flower by which we become instruments of thy peace.
___ Frank sent one last message: "Just wish we had longer time to know each other better! The Lord will save us a table, and plenty of time to do just that." Well, the Lord saves us a table. The Son at last shines. The invisible rope still links us earth to heaven, heaven to earth. Mark the last sun that shines. Be patient, friend.
___ John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines
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